Syracuse, NY -- Lepa Pullins held her hands in the air and looked into the clear sky Sunday afternoon as dozens of family and friends circled around a memorial for her son who was stabbed to death hours earlier.

"Somebody pray for me," Pullins cried. "This is my son. May 27, 1996. Memorial Day. I went through 27 hours of labor."

Charles "Chuck" Pitts Jr., 17, was gone. So were his dreams. The Corcoran High School senior was set to graduate in December. He was an honor roll student who wanted to join the Air Force after his 18th birthday, said his stepfather, Lamont Pullins.

Syracuse police say someone stabbed Pitts in the chest around 1 a.m. Sunday as a party was dispersing from the Community Room on the second floor of Clinton Plaza Apartments at 550 S. Clinton St.

He was pronounced dead a half-hour later at Upstate University Hospital, police said.

By Sunday afternoon, an estimated 200 to 300 people gathered with balloons, flowers and stuffed animals at the edge of the Murbro parking lot, about a block from the apartment complex on South Clinton Street.

Tears flowed and people embraced as Pullins sang her son a rendition of R. Kelly's "I Wish" -- surrounded by candles that spelled out "Chuck" and a family photograph. Pullins swayed back and forth, looked straight at her son's picture, and sang:

"I wish I could hold you now.

"I wish I could touch you now.

"I wish I could talk to you, be with you somehow.

"Mommy know you're in a better place and she know she can't see your face. But she know you're smiling down on her saying everything's OK."

The song continued to play for more than hour, as friends, neighbors and classmates crowded around, cried and hugged each other.

"He didn't deserve this," said Shallanee Russo, 17, who was in the same third-grade class as Pitts at Dr. King Elementary School. They are now both seniors at Corcoran High School, she said. "He was real smart. He always got his work done."

Ashley Homer, a 15-year-old sophomore at Corcoran, said Pitts was nice and always had a big smile on his face.

Pitts played football and ran track at Corcoran, his classmates said. He also had been in a Young Black Engineer's Program, his stepfather, Lamont Pullins said.

Sunday, Russo, Homer and others at the memorial couldn't help but tear up as Pitts' grandmother cried over and over, "They took my grand baby. They took him from us." They also watched tearfully as their classmate's mother and aunt -- Pullins and her sister Wilcreshia Jones -- sang, cried and asked why? At one point, Jones, still singing, cradled her nephew's photograph, and fell to the ground. Jones appeared to have passed out and was carried out of the crowd, but returned to mourn a short time later.

"This is a terrible loss," said the Rev. John Schopfer, of Brady Faith Center in Syracuse. "Please Lord, help us to remember words to that song because there is a God who has a place for us, whether we're 17 or 77."

Pullins and Jones continued to sing, as Schopfer told everyone that "God is there, even though in times like this we don't understand. Bless this grieving family..."

Mothers Against Gun Violence member Rita Fredette, whose son Joshua was murdered in 2005, held her hand above Pullins as she grieved her son's death.

"In the name of Jesus, hold this mother up," Fredette said.

Mothers Against Gun Violence co-founder Helen Hudson said she went to Pullins' home Sunday morning. After she arrived, Pullins asked Hudson to take her to church. Hudson said they went to People's AME Zion Church.

"She just needed to feel love and feel God and hear the Word," Hudson said. "She just lost her 17-year-old son."